


the repeated image of the lover, destroyed

by killingthemoon



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Heaven, Hell, Hurt/Comfort, I saw that tag and had to steal it it's perfect, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Protective Crowley, This will get less Sad I promise, Wings, cw: gabriel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-05-02 08:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19195174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killingthemoon/pseuds/killingthemoon
Summary: “They took my wing. They took my wing, Crowley, they—” He clamped a hand over his mouth as though furious with himself for speaking.Crowley’s blood—or whatever passed for blood in his inhuman, immortal body—froze.(Currently on hold! Or hiatus! Or something! I'll try and come back to it though, I'm definitely not finished with this bad boy.)





	1. lacuna

**Author's Note:**

> title from richard siken's 'crush' (I am so sorry for this mr. siken)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> la·cu·na  
>  _noun_  
>  an unfilled space or interval; a gap.

"Angel, come on now, you know you can't keep avoiding me forever." The tone of this phone call was playful.

"Angel. This is a tad excessive, even for you, don't you think?" Slightly worried, though not too much so. Aziraphale had kept his silence before, and had always broken it, eventually.

"Aziraphale. Fine, I'll say it—please?" Definitely worried.

"Aziraphale, Angel, it's been nearly two months and I need you to answer me." He was now bordering panic.

After ten months and a day of complete and utter silence, Crowley kicked the bookstore's door open.

It was empty.

There was no angel nestled comfortably in one of his cushy armchairs with a book propped open in his hands, no angel meticulously making hot cocoa in the kitchen, no angel compulsively peering through the shop’s blinds, silently hoping it would be a slow day for customers. It was barren, almost deserted—Crowley had never seen the place looking so desolate before, not with Aziraphale there to tend to it almost obsessively. He let the door swing shit behind him, reducing the Soho noise to a muffled hum in the background.

“Angel!” The cry echoed dismally around the room, ricocheting off the walls and coming back to him like a slap to the face. There was no answer. A coil of slithering, serpentine fear nestled itself in the pit of his stomach.

“Aziraphale!” he tried, but his efforts were in vain. The angel simply was not home. Almost as though in a trance, he began to walk. He ran his fingers lightly along the wallpaper, where it was still visible. A memory of a conversation sprang into mind, shockingly vivid.

 _“Oh come now, dear, this is perfect for the decor scheme I have in mind!_ ”

“ _Angel, if I let you purchase that damned wallpaper, it'll be a complete failure on my part. That is the most_ hideous _wallpaper I have ever seen, and I spent a few days in the Horsehead Inn during the—16th, was it? All arguments aside, we are_ not _getting that._ ”

_They had gotten it in the end, of course they had. Aziraphale always seemed to get his way with him._

The back room, he reasoned. He must be in the back room, too caught up in something or the other to have heard him, or maybe he was just taking a very long nap. Aziraphale did not often sleep, but he hoped, he  _hoped_ that it would be the case today. Memories of the last time he'd entered the bookshop to find it devoid of angel came to him alongside fresh waves of panic. He hadn't known, then, had had no way of knowing if the flames engulfing the building were hellish or not; there had been nothing knowable apart from the solid fact that Aziraphale  _was not there_ , and he wasn't now, either. Different days, different silence, same blind and frantic terror.

Time was not linear. It moved in circles. Everything that had already happened would happen once more; and there he was. There he was.

He made his way through rows and rows of winding shelves, touching the spines of ancient books. They leaned into his touch, familiar to them as he was. They were beginning to accumulate dust without Aziraphale there to maintain their perfect cleanliness, and his fingers were leaving the faintest of tracks as he proceeded.

In the back room, he found the angel’s empty cup of cocoa sitting on his desk, the lamp still on, and he felt the coil of fear tighten like a strangling fist.

Next to the lamp was a letter. Neatly opened with a letter-opener—trust the angel to do something as simple as _opening a letter_ with a letter-opener—the paper from within it askew. Of course, a letter would not usually have been of much importance to him, but this one was different. He could make out a short paragraph inscribed on it in Heavenly Script. It glowed, despite the light of the lamp, glowed golden. It called to Crowley, seemed to very nearly hum with Heavenly Influences. The letter was very clearly not addressed to him, and to read it would be absolutely out of the question, a violation of privacy, even.

He read it.

 

_Aziraphale, guardian of the Eastern Gate and the Apple Tree, Heavenly Field Agent to the Mortal Plane,_

_It has come to Our attention that you have been Meddling with that which you do not understand. Such things involving: the End-Times, the Antichrist, and the Demon Crawly._

_We are Extremely Disappointed with your conduct. We had always trusted you to be Responsible and had even chosen to overlook the loss of your Flaming Sword in favour of your Pure Potential. We are not at all Pleased. However, We are Merciful, and would simply like to have a...what is the word? A Chat._

_We consequently request that you report immediately to Our offices, on business related to these Divine Matters._

_Signed,_

 

And here the paper demonstrated a squiggling sort of signature that was glowing far too brightly to be made out properly. Not by Crowley, anyway. He had lost the ability to make out Heavenly Signatures a long time ago.

 _Shit_ , he thought numbly. _Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit._

Heaven had Recalled him.

This was not good at all. Heav- Hel- _someplace_ knew what they were doing to him there. While the bastards playing the Good Side certainly enjoyed upholding a facade of kindly forgiveness, he knew that they were, in truth, anything but.

He had experienced this himself before his Fall.

Heart racing, he folded the letter neatly up and slid it into his coat's pocket. The paper had burned his fingers slightly—they were red, and stung smartly. He did not care. His mind was going a million miles an hour, doubts and fears tripping over one another at breakneck speeds.

What wasn't Aziraphale back yet? Had Heaven hurt him? (No, don't think of that, don't think of broken bones and bubbling ichor.) Had he  _Fallen_? (No. Crowley knew that he would feel it, somehow, if his angel Fell. He knew it in the very depths of his being.) 

The feeling of dread in his stomach had reached previously uncharted levels, a feeling of impending doom so strong it made his teeth chatter together as though he was outside in the freezing cold. He couldn’t leave him Upstairs, not all alone—but going up there to retrieve him would be nothing short of suicide. He would be struck down before he could get anywhere close to where the angel may be, and a Truly Dead Crowley would not help the situation one bit.

Besides, even if he did manage to get to him, Aziraphale would be furious with him and would refuse to go anyway; furious of all Crowley had risked getting there, furious that he didn’t believe he could handle it himself. His angel, his beautiful and stubborn and  _wonderful_ angel.

He realized that his hands were shaking.

Cursing Heaven and Hell and anything else that may be, he sank into the vacated chair, wishing more than ever he could be there to help. The shop's coldness was wrong. It was not supposed to be empty. He could almost see a phantom-Aziraphale standing across the room, rifling through a novel, could almost hear him bustling about the kitchen, fixing him a nice cup of tea. He could hear his voice as he chided him for his poor posture, or as he prattled on about something in that hopelessly endearing way of his. It wasn't supposed to be empty.

But it was, and Crowley was all alone.


	2. naufragous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nau·fra·gous  
>  _adjective_  
>  in danger of being wrecked or totally destroyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies in advance :)

He was pacing again, glaring at nothing and everything in particular, a horrible ache throbbing his chest.

His first course of action had, of course, been to send a direct message Up. He’d called with Aziraphale’s phone, the old one perched precariously on the stack of books next to his desk, because he had a nasty feeling that Heaven wouldn’t answer if they knew it was him before picking up.

The angel that had taken the call had not at all been pleased.

“Aziraphale will be back when he will be back,” she had snapped at him. He’d had to battle down the many biting remarks he'd longed to hurl back at her. “Firstly, you shouldn’t _care_ about his fate. And secondly, this won’t help either of you in the long term, so I strongly suggest you never ask again! We will send him back at the appropriate time! Now, _goodbye_ , Crawly.”

So a fat lot of good that had done.

He had then taken to pacing the shop incessantly, ridiculous, half-formed ideas popping into his head and dying down almost instantly. (Not that, that could never work. Unless...no, no it couldn't. But maybe _that_ could—?) There was only one thing he was certain of, and that was that he _needed Aziraphale back_. He needed the angel the same way humans needed air to breathe, the same way plants needed the sun. He tore his sunglasses off in frustration, dropping them to the floor and crushing them beneath his heel, cursing the name of Heaven and everything it was—cruel and harsh, nothing but a colder and more self-righteous version of Hell.

He was tired and worried and wanted, above all else, for Aziraphale to be with him again.

He wanted the angel to be back, he wanted with a fierce and feverish fervour. He wanted the angel in all his bookish ways, in the longing glances he shot at him when he thought Crowley wasn’t looking, in the _wonderful_ macarons he could bake when prompted. He wanted the angel, with his tartan sweaters and scent of vanilla and old book pages. He wanted in all the ways he knew he could never have, had always, always, always wanted. ( _I've loved you since Eden. If we knew each other before, then I loved you then, too, and now, and always, and forever. Do with this adoration as you will._ )

He wanted now, above all, for Aziraphale to be _home_ again. And home was not, and had never been, the pristine white halls of Heaven. Not to his angel.

Home was the bookshop. Home was London. Home was with _Crowley_.

 . . .

Two months after Crowley’s discovery of the empty flat, he got his wish.

 . . .

He was sitting in the chair, Aziraphale’s chair, fiddling absent-mindedly with the manuscript Heaven had sent. It still hurt to hold, but slightly less now. Perhaps he had simply leeched whatever had made it heavenly out, so often had his demonic fingers unfolded and reread the words written upon it. He hadn’t left the shop in days. He missed Aziraphale dreadfully, missed him with a physical pain. He felt as though a part of his very essence had been cleaved away from him with an icy knife.

And then he heard something.

A faint whistling, almost like a bomb plummeting down through the sky. Only, it couldn’t be a bomb, could it? It was growing louder and louder and then, with a cataclysmic deal of noise, something fell through the roof of the bookshop and crash-landed on the carpet.

Crowley scrambled to his feet, dark wings flaring out defensively. He was brandishing the letter like a weapon. There was dust everywhere; there was a great hole in the roof, wooden beams splintering, and he could see straight up into Aziraphale’s small flat, and from there, the endless night sky beyond. But as he watched on in shock, it all began to repair itself, knitting back together with great creaking and snapping noises until there was no indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened at all, at least, not from the outside. The dust was beginning to settle. Squinting, he could make out a shape. It was humanoid, it was lying on its side, it was—

“ _Aziraphale_?”

He fell to his knees next to the the angel.

His first, immediate conclusion was that Aziraphale had Fallen.

For a handful of—not terrifying, terrifying couldn't even begin to cover this feeling, for this was the feeling of stepping out into the ether and realizing, for the first time, that there was nothing and no one that would catch you, this was screaming in the face of an uncaring and  _cruel_  God—terrifying moments, he was certain that his angel had come back to him demon, that he had been cast down from Heaven. His heart was hammering impossibly fast in his chest. But then he began to pick up smaller details over the crushing stream of _your fault, your fault, all your fucking fault_ going through his head in time with his heartbeat. There was no fire, for a start. And, he realized with dawning horror, the ichor covering Aziraphale's jacket was still gold, not bright red like his own.

Which dragged him into a different sort of nightmare.

The back of Aziraphale’s jacket was positively _drenched_ with ichor, blood, what-have-you.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley reached out with trembling hands and turned his head so that he could look at his face. His hands rested in his not-quite-golden curls unwittingly. Aziraphale's eyes were closed, and there was a nasty cut on his cheekbone, another running along the cut of his jaw like someone had taken a knife to his marble features.

“Angel, please!” he pleaded again, shaking him slightly. His voice sounded too fragile compared to the roaring noise in the room—or maybe that was just the blood pounding in his own head. " _Please_ _wake up_."

Aziraphale woke up.

With a start.

Gasping wildly, he jerked upright, turning to Crowley. His blue eyes—blue like cornflowers, like the summer sky, not yellow and slitted—were glassy through a haze of pain.

“Crowley—” he slurred, but could get no further.

“Hush, Angel, I’ve got you. Here—” He miracled one of the bookshelves closer and leaned Aziraphale gently against it. His chest was heaving with inconsistent breaths. Subconsciously, he reached out and grabbed Crowley’s hand. His grip was frighteningly weak, but he still clung to his fingers like they were a lifeline, like they were the only things keeping him from falling backwards into the endless, howling void.

“Crowley. Crowley, Crowley,” he gasped out, saying the name, _his_ name, like a prayer, like a curse. “Please go away.”

“And leave you here alone? Angel, did you hurt your head in that fall?”

He shook his head weakly, still struggling for breath.

“I can’t let you see. I can’t—” He broke off thickly, gasping in pain, and Crowley would have burned the whole world down to naught but ash and kindling if it meant that Aziraphale would never have reason to let out a sound like that again. And then—it happened suddenly, so suddenly that it took him a moment to realize—

Aziraphale was crying.

 _Aziraphale_ was _crying._

Aziraphale was crying and he didn’t know what to do. He felt so pathetically small, so disgustingly _useless_ as he watched. Liquid Light was streaming from his eyes like twin rivers. Crowley couldn’t tear his eyes away from the shoulder of the left sleeve, which had been torn jaggedly. He had worked so hard to preserve it over the centuries, and now it was torn and covered with his _blood_. He was hurt, he was so, so hurt, and Crowley was going to do something about that. He felt fierce anger seeping into his bones, all-consuming, wrathfully engulfing. It was something else to focus on, and focus he did.

“Angel,” he began again, almost harshly. There would be time for tender words later; he could hold him and comfort him later, but right now was the time for vengeance and heads on spears. He snapped his eyes away from the sleeve. “Angel, who did this?”

Aziraphale didn’t give him any answers, though if because he didn't want to or couldn't remained to be seen. He contented himself with providing them for him.

“It was that _fucker_ Gabriel, wasssn't it? What did he do, angel, _tell me_.” He couldn’t have kept the hiss out of his voice if he had tried. It had an inconvenient habit of coming out whenever he was upset.

Aziraphale’s hand was trembling violently in his. He squeezed it tightly, saying what he couldn't with words with the simple gesture.

“They took my wing. They took my wing, Crowley, they—” He clamped a hand over his mouth as though furious with himself for speaking.

Crowley’s blood—or whatever passed for blood in his inhuman, immortal body—froze.

“They what?” he asked, his voice sounding distant through his dawning comprehension, dawning horror, because surely he had misheard. He had to have, because the alternate reality that presented itself was simply too horrific to even consider. He settled himself cross-legged in front of Aziraphale.

“Angel,” he said, very seriously. “Aziraphale, my dear. What did they do to you?” It wasn’t a question, didn’t lilt up at the end the way questions did. It was, instead, rather flat. Almost disbelieving. He didn't want to believe, not this.

The angel squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head slowly. His left hand was still covering his mouth. His right was limp in Crowley’s. A sinking sort of weight seemed to have settled upon the demon’s chest and deemed it to be a wonderful place to stay.

He reached out his free hand, brushing away the glowing tears from Aziraphale’s face with a gentle thumb. The fury of mere moments ago had completely dissipated, replaced with harrowing worry. He didn’t remove his hand from where it was cupping the angel’s face. His thumb was still running lightly over his cheekbone. Silently, wordlessly, Aziraphale looked at him. He had somehow managed to stop crying, but his breathing was still rather shallow and uneven, and his eyes were slightly unfocused now that they were open again. It took him several tries to properly push any sound out of his mouth.

“You really want to see?” he asked, his voice as shaky as his trembling hands.

Crowley nodded, giving his hand an encouraging squeeze. “Please, my dear,” he said softly. He needed to see.

With a resigned nod, Aziraphale leaned forward and closed his eye, keeping them shut tight as if he, too, would much rather ignore all of it. He took in a rattling breath and released his wings.

His _wing_.

For the first time in a long time, Crowley forgot how to breathe. His breath caught in his throat jaggedly, cloth on a rusted nail.

Aziraphale only had one wing. It was bent at a sickeningly odd angle, as though broken or dislocated. The usually well-kept and groomed white feathers were ruffled and bent in ways that would have set him shaking under normal circumstances. The other, he realized with numb horror, looked as though it had been torn raggedly from his back with violent and cruel hands. The stump was still bleeding, enthusiastically gushing ichor that ran in mournfully golden rivers down his back.

It was Crowley’s turn to raise a hand over his mouth.

“Aziraphale,” he said. Just the one name. He said it like a prayer, like a lover's name. He felt as though the world had gone completely and utterly silent apart from Aziraphale’s renewed sobs of pain and terror. The planet had fallen off-kilter, had stopped spinning to emphasize the utter  _wrongness_ of it.

"I'm so sorry," he managed through his tears, and the words were heartbreaking. "I'm so, so sorry."

He was about to tell him, fiercely, that it wasn't his fault. It was the bastards in Heaven that ought to he apologizing—Gabriel in particular, it seemed, but his eyes rolled suddenly back into his head as he slumped forwards, dragged into unconsciousness by the agony he was undoubtedly in. The words remained caught on Crowley's tongue, forever lost to the world.

Crowley caught him. His mind had gone totally, mercifully blank.

He gathered Aziraphale up in his arms as carefully as he could. Precious flowers he didn't want to crush. A skittish songbird. A beauty, a terror. The very tip of his single, lonely white wing brushed the floor.

He carried him up the stairs and into the bathroom, where he discarded the ruined jacket and began the messy work of cleaning up the ichor, fully seeing the extent of the damage up-close. He miracled some bandages over with which he bound the nauseating ruination of what had once been a wing. He brushed his fingers over the smaller cuts and bruises, healing them as best he could in his present condition, wincing in sympathy every time Aziraphale's breath hitched in pain, even in sleep. He set his other, dislocated wing in place before taking him to the bedroom. His actions were all clumsy and mechanical, so unlike him, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't help it.

He lay Aziraphale down in the bed as gently as he could. The smallest of moans of pain slipped past his teeth, and Crowley’s heart _broke_. He pulled the tartan quilt over him, a dying sunbeam falling onto his head through the window, a wistful halo, a comfort, a loss.

Once he was quite sure the angle was as comfortable as he could make him, Crowley sank into the chintz armchair next to the bed. He was exhausted. He could hear a bird singing softly outside, could hear cars as they trundled down the street. Life went on, somehow.

Only then, in the stillness of the room, did he allow himself to release the sobs built up in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes! Yell at me in the comments if you'd like. Also maybe mention your favourite line or part or whatever? No obligation but it just makes me Happy and also I love All Of You no matter what.
> 
> (Also, I won't even lie, I got the idea for this chapter from A Court of Thorns and Roses, from the scene where Feyre comes downstairs in the middle of the night to find Tamlin and the fairie whose wings Amarantha ripped out. Of course that fairie died very quickly, but I promise that bit won't happen to Aziraphale. Probably.)


	3. opia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> o·pi·a  
>  _noun_  
>  the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable, as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's certainly been a while! I've been away on vacation, and only recently got back. I wrote this whole thing on three different planes, so that makes up for it a bit, right? Again, sorry! I hope you enjoy :)

Aziraphale slept for a solid week.

It was the feverish sort of half-sleep that came with illness or injury, interjected with brief moments of delirious, sporadic consciousness. One eye open, one still stuck in a dream. In the in-between. 

Aziraphale didn't sleep often, but he'd had his moments. The most notable had been the five years he'd slept after the Second World War had ended, utterly exhausted with the effort of keeping the Jews alive and the Nazis as at-bay as he could. Crowley didn't blame him. He'd been dead-tired, too. There had been a blazing row, right at the beginning, because Aziraphale had thought the War had been Crowley's doing. He'd had to explain to him that, no, he couldn't have come up with anything like this if he tried; this was humans again. This was the impossible, deplorable cruelty of humans. The argument had really only been resolved when he'd rescued the angel from the church a few months afterwards.

Several times he woke up struggling for breath, forehead beaded with sweat, eyes blown almost cartoonishly wide. _Where am I, where am I?_ he gasped out, and Crowley rushed to comfort him. _With me_ , he assured him, _here with me._

Three times, he woke up screaming. Twice, it was screaming Crowley's name. He didn't move from the angel's bedside the entire time, tapping his foot nervously on the birch wood floor and fussing with his quilt. It was most likely the longest he had gone without sleep for a good century or two, and he felt the weariness borne of over a year spent worrying bearing heavily down on him, but he plowed through.

At about two in the morning, a week after the angel's return, he woke up, panicked in the darkness of the room, squeezed his eyes painfully shut, and exploded all the light bulbs in a frantic attempt to get them to turn on. A strangled sort of sob, half-formed and desperate, escaped his throat. Crowley was by his side in an instant, repairing them all with a thought and getting them to click on with another. Aziraphale relaxed ever so slightly as the golden light flooded in.

“Crowley?”

"I'm here," Crowley said quickly, "I'm here, you're here, it's okay. The lights are on, see? They're on." Aziraphale slumped back against the headboard before immediately drawing away with a wince. "Careful," he said, numbly.

The quiet pooled between them, brittle and crumbling. He didn't understand how anyone could ever have described silence as peacefulness. Aziraphale's eyes were darting around the room, never stilling, drinking it in as though scared that it would all be stolen away from him again in an instant, there and then gone, a trick of smoke and mirrors. His fingers were tapping an uneven and muffled melody on the covers, chewed-down and rough instead of the carefully-manicured state he’d gotten used to.

"Crowley," he said again. He looked so very lost.

"I'm here," he repeated, a broken record in his predictability. He was a creature of habit, really. A culmination of spinning cogs and jittery wires. An automaton. He could have laughed, absurdly, but he didn’t. He heard it anyway, maniacal and delirious.

“Don’t go.”

A pause.

“I won’t.”

. . .

"Aziraphale," he cautiously began, unsure. He was perched on the edge of the bed like some strange and over-sized species of bird. He didn't know what was or what was not acceptable now, he was exploring entirely uncharted territory, but he had to grow very familiar with the terrain, and soon. "What—"

"Don't ask," he said, cutting in before he could even finish the sentence. His tone was pleading. "Don't. Please don't ask."

"Aziraphale," Crowley said again, the desperate edge to it scraping up against the white noise in the room horridly. "You disappeared without a word for a _year_. And—and I tried not to, you know, pressure you into answering my calls because I figured you were avoiding me for some reason, or maybe just busy, so I gave you your space. And then I came here, and I found that awful letter, and Aziraphale—"

"Stop it," Aziraphale gasped out, his breathing quickening. It reminded Crowley horribly of an animal terrified enough to gnaw off its own leg to get out of a snare trap. "Stop it, stop it, Crowley, _please_ . I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about what happened, especially not with _you_ ." He flinched at the sound of those last words, and scrambled to apologize. "I'm sorry, that's not what I meant, I—I'm _sorry_." His frustration was clearly palpable. The words weren't coming as they used to. They were coming out garbled and ill-fittingly, far from his usually elegant prose.

Crowley felt as though he wanted to scream. Here was Aziraphale, his Aziraphale, back and changed beyond belief. And perhaps he could read this dismay on the demon's face because he reached out and grabbed ahold of his hand, almost reverently, almost as though assuring himself that he was really there.

"I was so scared," he said, haltingly, "that when I woke up you'd be gone."

"I'm not," he answered, simply because he did not know what else to say. He was reaching desperately for any last strand left that he could still recognize properly, any sort of foothold. He didn’t hear any ring of truth in his own words. Where was the proof that he wasn’t gone?

"I was so scared that I'd wake up and I'd be back _there_ and that this would all have been another, I don't know, _game._ " His words were twisting and bitter, calloused. They could hear an owl outside the window, hooting mournfully into the gentle night. They listened for a moment.

Crowley looked at Aziraphale. He had already committed every small detail to memory; the gentle curve of his lips, the colour of his hair, the minute nick on the corner of his jaw from some hellish fight or the other. It pained him to see the differences, in the hollow look in his eyes, in the horror show that was his wing. He wanted desperately for the two years before all of this had happened to return, the two years of peace and ethereal radio silence. He wanted the picnics and the teasing quips and the _maybe we can be more_ suspended between them in the slight brushing of fingers, in the friendly hugs that lingered a moment too long, properly unearthed from the layers of apprehension of disapproval it had long been buried beneath. The truth of the matter was, he wanted, and he wanted what he couldn't have. He had long ago learned to make concessions, but he'd thought _maybe_ —

He was being selfish, he thought. He put a stranglehold on his running thoughts, willing himself back into some semblance of calmness. It was too late. Aziraphale, though he rarely showed it, was extremely adept in the field of emotions; there were certain things seen in the raising of goosebumps, in the catch of breath like cloth on nail, in the twitch of two fingers, something that he could understand. He could comprehend their strange and cryptic language, as easily as any other. He saw something in the demon's eyes, a vast and unknowable fear, and he began to fold back in on himself. It was almost painful to watch as the old stiffness set in, centuries of friendship cast off like an uncomfortably stiff coat.

"I missed you," he blurted out, because he couldn't think of anything else to say, and if he was going to do this he might as well be bloody honest about it. "I missed you so much, angel."

A hard, wooden pause. Unforgiving. "I know."

He fidgeted with the blanket, running the cloth between his thumb and index finger, felt the soft fabric and the lint as it rubbed against his skin. There were no more words he could think of, he had nothing left to give. Aziraphale was surveying him again, and he looked so _tired_. There was a new and intense weariness settled in his eyes, ancient and afraid. He reached out again, because it was what he did—no matter how turmoiled the sea, no matter how bruised and bloody and broken they were, he would always, always reach out for Aziraphale's hand.

He pulled himself up onto the bed properly, shifting himself into position next to Aziraphale, back pressed against the headboard. He miracled over more thick blankets, from the cupboard and from thin air, wrapping them around them until the two of them were in the middle of a twisting sort of nest.

"Is this okay?" he asked.

A moment of hesitation, a slow nod.

"Okay." He put an arm around Aziraphale's shoulders, drawing him in close. His head came to rest on his chest, able to listen to the trundle of his immortal heart as it beat, an unwavering testimony to the solid fact that he was there and not leaving. Aziraphale had never been one for close contact, and it was usually Crowley who planted his legs over the angel's lap as he read, who grabbed ahold of his hand as they stumbled drunkenly about. His breath caught for a second in his throat before he eased into it, letting himself be held, accepting comfort. "Is this—okay?"

"Yes."

There was movement and movement and stillness, there was the silence between tortured screams and there was the noise in lungfuls of salted water. There was the pain in scathing sunlight, the burn of raindrops. Nothing was as it should be, everything was off-kilter. A planet thrown out of orbit.

"What _happened_ , Aziraphale?" Crowley finally asked. "Where did you _go_?"

A common misconception: the idea of the calm before the storm. What most people didn't realize was that there was no such thing. There was only the stifling stillness, impossible to breathe through. Drowning in air.

"Why won't you tell me?" Voice broken. He had stood at the true end of the world, but somehow, this felt more like it. The walls were crumbling behind Aziraphale's eyes, battlements and barrages turned to dust. In the end, there was a once-great fortress in ruins, and that was where they both now stood, cold wind whipping at their clothes, set in defiance and fury and fear immeasurable.

There were minute differences, seconds and hours flowing and ebbing along. There were questions with no answers. And it all narrowed down to this: did he dare disturb the universe? His hand was poised above the knocker. The door towered before him. Did he dare?

In fits and starts, he told him.

. . .

The angel seated at the front desk didn't notice him until he was right in front of her, clearing his throat. He was squinting slightly under the harsh fluorescent glare of the lights. It was meant to be impressive, imposing, a demonstration of Heavenly might, but he wondered if anyone really saw it that way anymore, if ever.

The angel looked up. Her eyes were like hammered golden plates, glinting ever so slightly. One of her ears was unnaturally pointed, and the lines of her suit were cutting and crisp. All business.

"Divine greetings. You have reached the Help Desk. How may we be of service today?" Her voice was lilting and sweet, words well-rehearsed from the corporate script. "First state your name and rank, please," she added as a helpful afterthought.

"Hi. Aziraphale, Principality, Eastern Gate of Eden and Heavenly Field Agent and all that. I received a summons in my bookshop, just a few hours ago," he said. "I was wondering where I should go, now that I'm here." There was a small plant on the desk next to the pristine monitor screen. He recognized the slightly too-perfect look about it, the look of something that had died and been miracled back to life too many times to count. Maybe angels were just inherently bad at horticulture. Crowley would have been appalled.

"I see," the angel said. Pressing her lips together in a strict line, she clicked the mouse a few times before turning to face him again. "Yes, excellent. Gabriel wants to speak to you, Principality Aziraphale. You'll find him in his personal offices. Twenty-third floor, sixth door to your right, can't miss it."

"Alright," he said. He couldn't deny that he was nervous. He had enjoyed almost over two years of silence on Heaven's part, and it had been a comfort to have no one breathing over his shoulder for once. He wondered, briefly, if this was about Crowley. "You wouldn't happen to know why he wants to see me, would you?"

"No," she said, in the tone of one who hadn't been explicitly told but could work it out clearly nonetheless. "It's beyond my position. Have a blessed day."

"Right. Blessed day, you too. Cheerio." He gave an embarrassing little wave which the angel pointedly ignored. He didn't blame her.

He very nearly exploded in the lift. It wasn't exactly cramped and he wasn't exactly a claustrophobe, but it was just a touch smaller than comfortable. It took a good long while to reach the twenty-third floor, and some dimwitted fool had thought it a good idea to play Elgar’s _The Severn Suite_ on repeat over the speakers to fill in the stretch of smooth quiet. He tapped his foot against the cold white tile, impatiently checking his watch. He had never been very good at waiting, too filled with restless energy to spend his time standing still. Crowley was the only one who understood the want for movement, really, the desire to busy his hands or to pace about. No one in Heaven had ever said anything about it back in the day, buy he hadn't missed the discreetly disapproving glances thrown his way every time he cracked his knuckles or moved his wings around more often than strictly necessary. He hoped that it would be over soon. He'd promised Crowley he'd pay for dinner tonight, and he had a lovely prosecco tucked away and just dying to be opened in pleasant company.

The last two years had been some of the best of his impossibly long life. Heaven and Hell had been duped easily enough with the trick he and Crowley had pulled, the body-swap, and perhaps scared, too, choosing to leave the two of them alone. They'd been unsure of what to do, at first. For the first time in either of their existences, there were no instructions, no carefully-worded rules or impositions. There was just _them_ , and whatever they chose to do.

It had started off slowly. Dinner together more often than usual, telephone calls to fill the empty hours, spiraling slowly until it culminated into what it was now; all unrestrained laughter and brushing arms and fond glances. They were standing on the cusp of something, teetering on the precipice of an impossibly grand void. And he thought, maybe he was willing to step out into it if he could do it with Crowley's hand in his own. He had long ago learned to make concessions, of course, but he thought _maybe_ —

The metal lift doors slid open with three cheery little bell-chimes. A smooth, mechanical voice simpered out of a speaker overhead: " _Level twenty-three: head offices._ "

He blinked, slightly dazed, pulling himself fully out of his reverie. The hall beyond was floored with an incredibly boring marble stretch, the left side entirely taken up by a line of perfectly polished floor-to-ceiling windows which provided a vertigo-inducing view of London, or Tokyo, or New York, or some Other Place entirely. Crowley would have liked the forced minimalistic effort. He went in for that sort of thing. There were seven doors lining the other side.

"Sixth door to the right," he said softly out loud, mostly just to hear something in the nearly stifling silence. His shoes clicked sharply against the tile. The sixth door towered, a single plaque fixed firmly on its wooden face.

 _Gabriel, Archangel_ the gleaming metal said.

"Indeed," he muttered, and rapped his knuckles sharply against the wood twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definition from the chapter summary courtesy to 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' which is also now one of my favourite websites. Find it here: https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
> 
> My love for T. S. Eliot really bled through this one, didn't it?
> 
> As always, please leave a comment or a kudos if so inclined. I didn't answer to all of them on the previous chapters, but I read (and re-read, multiple times) and cherished each and every one,


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